


I'm Tired of Running (Because the Numbers Don't Lie)

by Pandemic



Series: The Wiring in Your Veins [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, BAMF Natasha Romanov, F/M, Natasha Feels, Natasha-centric, This is just straight up Natasha adoration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 05:43:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3108254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pandemic/pseuds/Pandemic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha wipes the blood from her mouth, spits out a tooth, and grins. It’s a slightly manic grin, made more ominous by the fact one of her front teeth is missing. The white of her eyes are showing and she doesn't miss the look of apprehension on the man holding the blade to her throat. In one swift and fluid sequence she has him on the floor struggling between her thighs, and the blade between her teeth. Her suit’s left arm has rolled up in the struggle, and the numbers that lie there are peeking out the fabric.</p><p>The man barks out a laugh, “You? Black Widow has a soulmate? Who would be fucked up enough to want you?” the words are angry, bitter, the words of a dying man. He spits blood up into her face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm Tired of Running (Because the Numbers Don't Lie)

**Author's Note:**

> “For once I’d like to see the man forgive the monster. To see her, blood and scars, and love her anyway.”

The little redheaded girl hums a short lullaby as she draws a number on the wrist of her doll. The numbers are slightly shaky, but painted on with precision and absolute concentration, copying the ones on her own wrist. 22: 165 : 42 : 34. The last keeps changing, to her frustration, and so she simply writes the number _13_ on the doll’s wrist where her own seconds are because it’s her favourite number.

Her father comes in and laughs, ruffling her hair.

“Oh _katyonak_ , you cannot help your fascination can you?” it is said with no bite, and only a massive smile etched across the older man’s face, sending a look of complete adoration at the little girl.

“But _papa_ , she does not have a number! What if her beloved cannot find her?” she queries, as only a kid can. The man laughs, a big hearty solid laugh that never fails to make the girl giggle.

“Do not worry _katyonak,_ he will find her.” He turns serious and sits down at her level, “He will always find her because every version of himself loves her.” He thumbs her wrist, rubbing a familiar pattern over the pronounced capillaries as he has always done, crouching down to her level and holding her in his arms, playing along with her games until the small hours of the night.

* * *

 

Natasha wipes the blood from her mouth, spits out a tooth, and grins. It’s a slightly manic grin, made more ominous by the fact one of her front teeth is missing. The white of her eyes are showing and she doesn’t miss the look of apprehension on the man holding the blade to her throat. In one swift and fluid sequence she has him on the floor struggling between her thighs, and the blade between her teeth. Her suit’s left arm has rolled up in the struggle, and the numbers that lie there are peeking out the fabric.

The man barks out a laugh, “ _You?_ Black Widow has a soulmate? Who would be fucked up enough to want you?” the words are angry, bitter, the words of a dying man. He spits blood up into her face.

“I would ask for the whereabouts of your boss, but I can see you’d rather die than tell me.” Her voice is calm, barely betraying a quiver, and she slits his throat with no ceremony.

It’s always the ones with grandiose plans who spend their time monologuing who don’t actually get round to killing or who get swept up in the enemy provoking them. Natasha has sat through enough bad movies to know that the villains who talk never win.

The ordinary ones, the ones with no empathy or sympathy, will kill you with barely a second glance.

* * *

 

“ _Katyonak_ I need you to run when I say so, okay?” The words are feverish; quick, fast and quiet. There are five men who have been following the pair for the past ten blocks, and no matter how fast the little girl walks her father pulls her along faster, vice like grip on her hand, “Your _papa_ is just going to talk to these men about something, and then he will meet you okay?”

“But _papa_.” She whines, a tear rolling down her cheek, legs hurting. Her father stops, crouches down, glancing quickly behind her before fixing a smile on his face. He strokes her hair back behind her ear and stares at her face intensely.

“ _Katyonak,_ I need you to be brave for me and go straight home. Mikhail will pick you up – you remember Mikhail yes? I will be right behind you.” He reaches forward and enfolds her into a hug so tight the girl struggles to breath for a second before he rocks back, pulling the ring off his left hand and closes her palm over it, “Look after this for _papa._ And remember I’ll find you. Every version of me will find you, okay?” he smiles weakly before standing up and pushing her behind him, “ _Run my Tasha.”_ He whispers, and she obeys, running as fast as her short legs will carry her.

She looks round briefly before she rounds the corner, and she sees her father pull back a fist.

She doesn’t stop for the fifteen blocks it takes her to get home.

* * *

 

She’s burning rubber down Route 83 in a stolen minivan when a black escalade roars up into her rearview mirror. Glancing back, she commits the number plate and style of car in seconds whilst simultaneously running through possible exits ranking them from most inconspicuous to least.

She’s paid very well for what she does because she’s the best, and because she melts into the wood work just as fast as she appears. Today isn’t the day she’s going to get caught and _especially_ not by some idiot who drives a shitty (and dead obvious) black car with tinted windows like he's in some crappy mob movie.

Her eyes and the drivers connect for a second, and she can’t help but for once give in to a little flash, flipping them a middle finger as distraction before she swerves into the traffic, rolls out the side of the car and start running before they even know where she’s gone.

Her footfalls are heavy but quiet through the long, thick, wet grass and her pace is only hampered slightly when the chip embedded in her shoulder brushes against bone.

* * *

 

“You’ve grown so pretty Natasha. Smile just for me?” Mikhail looms over her, and for the first time in Natasha’s short life she feels the tendrils of fear curling up her back. She’s small, barely reaching the man’s hip, but the leer fixed on his face is sending goosebumps up her back. He grabs for her wrist, but she steps back quickly.

“Please don’t.” Her voice is quiet, scared and quivering, “My _papa_ will not be happy.”

Mikhail barks out a laugh, “Your _papa_ isn’t coming back for you stupid girl. Just you and me.”

Natasha’s back goes ramrod straight, “Take that back.” Her voice is still quiet, but this time it is laced with steel. Her right hand curls into a fist behind her back, like _papa_ had taught her and she could almost hear his voice in her head _“remember katyonak to go for weak flesh or bone that would break easily”_.

When he lunges for her again, she launches her fist into his face, knees him in the groin, and darts for the front door as the man howls in pain.

“ _NATASHA ROMANOV YOU CANNOT HIDE._ ”

She would do her best.

* * *

 

The first time she meets James it’s in the middle of a gang fight, fists and bullets flying between them. She’s taken down three men, him two, and they meet in the middle for a deadly dance of limbs. When he overpowers her, he holds her down with a metal hand and grins.

What worries her most is the fact the grin looks more menacing that it should and she’s suddenly reminded of Mikhail and his leer and the thought makes her go ice cold.

“I’ve heard a lot about you Black Widow.” His voice has an American lilt, almost undetectable under the thick smothering of Russian, but unmistakeable.

He blindfolds her and sticks her in the back of a truck. She’s silent for the whole journey, no matter how he tries to coax words out of her, instead focusing on feeling the turns and stops of the car and the smells of outside to try and detect where they are.

“I know what you are trying to do Widow. Trust me, it won’t work.” His voice comes from in front of her, perhaps about four steps, slightly to her left? Too far to lunge for him, too short to run away. As he continues to talk, her mind rushes through several different actions she could take which would leave him dead.

Sometimes it was a shame her mind had been wasted on a very particular skill set. She’d have probably made quite a good genius.

She decides against making any move, no one is expecting her to carry the microchip within her skin and so for now it’s safe, even if she was to escape she’s not sure where they are and she has no survival kit on her. Around thirty minutes later (she kept time by tapping a pattern against the floor) the blindfold is ripped off her and she’s blinded by light.

Great. Interrogation. Really original.

“I hear you’re in the business of trafficking nuclear weapon plans now Widow. Little Miss Assassin turned Spy?” the words are spat at her once she’s sat in a darkened room, the metal man sat opposite her.

She stays silent.

“Look by this point I’m sure you know how this goes. I ask you a question, you talk, and I don’t have to think of several original and highly painful ways to coerce you into talking.”

“If you’ve heard a lot about me I’m sure you’ve heard I’m not really a gossip.” She speaks, voice low and monotone. Of course she knows what’s coming, she’s already far away in her mind, back in a memory of a little girl sat playing dress-up with her father.

The slap stings, metal connecting with bone and when Natasha hears a crunch she’s sure her nose is broken again. Blood begins to stream out her right nostril and drips to the table in front of her. The flowers in her memory flicker through the pain.

“I can cause such disfiguration to your face your soulmate won’t want anything to do with you.” He snarls, and Natasha glances down at her wrist.

She trains her face not to show the surprise she feels when she notices she only has two weeks left.

* * *

 

Ivan is sat beside her, looking at her expectantly, and Natasha flings something witty and pithy across the table to a raised eyebrow.

She’s sat in the Mariinsky Theatre watching Swan Lake and her victory is so close she can almost taste it. Four of the five men who killed her father for not paying the loan shark he was indebted to are dead, and Natasha only has one left. Naturally, it is the ringleader, and naturally he is proving the most slippery to catch.

Ivan is the man’s slow and moronic accountant who has a taste for fast cars and loose women and luckily Natasha can play the part of the latter whilst driving the former. Wearing a red dress that dips to her navel and is slit halfway up the thigh, she can practically feel his leering and she has to smother a slight smile at the fact men are just so ridiculously _easy._ The cultivation of over fifteen years of planning is nearly fully executed and she has to stop herself from lunging across the table, pulling the switch knife at her ankle to Ivan’s throat and demanding where his boss is.

Natasha can wait though, she’s in no rush and the ideas she has for torturing the man roll through her head deliciously and whilst she takes no pleasure in killing as her day job she would make an exception for the man who destroyed and broke her father. Besides, it would be a shame to ruin such a beautiful ballet performance with bloodshed.

* * *

 

It’s been six days since she was shoved into this cell. Despite the fact its dim lit, with no windows, Natasha knows it has been this long because the light flickers every fifteen seconds, and she’s been using that as a landmark, scratching another mark on the wall with her nail as the light quakes. At this point, with blood crusted above her right eyelid and her right leg seizing up from the crowbar James had brought down on her thigh, the scratches on the wall are the only thing keeping the thin thread that is her sanity from snapping. She had long learnt that routine deflects the pain, gives her brain something else to think about other than the fact she might be about to die.

She’d use her wrist, but its stopped, the clock no longer ticking, and Natasha realises with a sigh that of course no one would want her, not really, not with her soul broken and twisted beyond recognition.

It’s not that she’s scared of dying, per se, because she’s quite sure her heart died along with her _papa_. It’s more the fact she doesn’t want to die in a 10x10 foot cell due to starvation or blood loss. She’d much rather die at the end of the barrel of a gun than in a claustrophobic cell that reeks of sweat and fear. She refuses to be another body found still in this cell, made fun of before getting rid of with no ceremony.

For the first time in a long time, Natasha feels well and truly alone. Ever since her _papa_ vengeance has been warming her bed, and the constant moving and information overloading her brain has meant she’s never really stopped to think about what her life has become. It’s like the red thread of her life split in two the moment she parted from her _papa_ and sometimes she can see the parallel flicker in her brain, the life she could had led free from murder and blood if only it had turned out differently, if it hadn’t been wrenched from her hands by four men wearing knuckledusters and wielding a crowbar.

It has been a long time since she’s cried, and she embeds her nails into the flesh of her palms to prevent them slipping out. She refuses to give James the victory over her.

The blood beneath her wrist begins to stir, and the counter flickers to life, counting down once again. _Three days left._

The cells flickering to life and giving her a new time with every rush of blood fills her with strength.

She will not give James the enjoyment of watching her break.

* * *

 

Ivan is on the bed, knocked out. When he wakes, she’ll be gone, only leaving her lingerie and a note of how great their supposed night was. Leaving that suggestion, given the kind of man Natasha knows he is, she knows he will assume he was just far too drunk for the encounter.

She scans the page carefully, looking for the trail she knows this man will leave. The chip embedded in her shoulder nags her constantly, the dull pain serving as a reminder of the job she isn’t following through in order to track this man down. If there is one thing Natasha prides herself on, it is her professionalism. She’s the classiest assassin you could ever meet.

Even she allows herself a moment to smile at the dichotomy of that sentence.

As her eyes alight on the information she needs, she wastes no time committing it to memory before mussing up her hair and smudging her lipstick, biting down hard on her lips until she nearly draws blood. In the mirror she looks perfectly debauched. Down the hall she stumbles in front of the security guard, as if inebriated and smiles. He merely shakes his head, waving her on and if Natasha was a lesser person she would crow with victory. Instead she merely puts more swagger in her step so she knows the guard is watching her ass rather than looking for her face.

* * *

The  _Latrodectus_ is a family of spiders, within which contains the infamous Black Widow spider. Usually black in colour, only the females (which are larger in size than the males) display the red, hourglass like feature on the abdomen. Known for eating their male partners immediately after mating to promote survival for their offspring, they are lethal, relying on vibrations through their web stronger than steel rather than what is observed.

When Natasha hears she has been given the moniker  _Black Widow_ through mutterings in Beirut and whispers in Reykjavik she finds a seedy little tattoo parlour in Mexico and has the hourglass engraved onto her abdomen. A warning sign and a stamp to show those who she is before she kills them.

She could never help herself from a little bit of theater.

* * *

 Later, Natasha won't remember much of that final day. Of using the zip of her trousers to slowly but surely hack a sharp edged stake out of the wood panelled floor. Of attacking the guard carrying her food with it, watching the blood gurgle out from the wound the makes in the middle of his suit. Of grasping his gun and using it to put a bullet through the next six guards who find her. Of coming face to face with James once more and screaming as he takes her by the shoulders and throws her against the floor with an inhuman strength, stepping and crushing her collarbone as though she was shit on his shoe.

She also won't remember biting down on his ankle and watching him roar in agony, reach for his gun and think  _Yes, this it it. I am happy to die with this._

She will, however, remember the almost blinding flash of light, of the arrow embedded in James shoulder and the man melting back into the shadows before another figure, hazy in her vision kneeling down and pressing a gun to her head in the same instant her wrist hits zero.

The figure startles, suddenly clear and she spots a hearing aid in one ear and greasy dark blonde hair falling over the other as eyes that later she will memorise the colour of look down at his own wrist, shocked to see a single digit flicker back at him.

Lifting his wrist, where Natasha will understand later is an comms unit, he speaks, voice low and puzzled.

"Sir, I think I am going to have to make a different call." 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Finally an update in my little series. I've been so fixated on this being perfect for Natasha because she is my one true love that I kind of ... didn't want to put it up? But here you are. Completely unbeta-ed so all mistakes are my own.
> 
> Will probably end up having a sequel from Clint's point of view because I love him.


End file.
